There is a galvanizing, homoerotic, punk-rock energy coursing through director Justin Kurzel’s unorthodox retelling of the oft-told tale of mythic 19th century Australian bandit Ned Kelly (here played with fierce intensity by “1917” star George Mackay).
Raised in a tin shack amidst an unforgiving, barren landscape, young Ned Kelly (astonishing Orlando Schwerdt) lived a rough, hard-scrabble existence with his siblings; their hopeless father and ferocious mother (the remarkable Essie Davis), who brazenly sleeps with a Sergeant (Charlie Hunnam) for cash to feed her family. After dad is dragged away for criminal activity, mom hands over young Ned to a feared outlaw (Russell Crowe) and the lad receives a brutal and horrific education on how to rob and kill. An older, tougher and more haunted Ned returns home years later only to find his siblings rustling horses while wearing flouncy dresses stolen from a nearby whorehouse. The drag is their attempt to disarm and freak-out the local authorities. Older Ned’s obsession with the iron-clad Monitor warship causes him to outfit his growing, lawless, posse in home-made bullet proof armor, and their criminal exploits eventually end in an ill-fated, blood-drenched battle with lawmen that made a folklore anti-hero out of him.
Nicholas Hoult adds a chilly, sexual, spider-like quality as a malevolent Constable who had an unhealthy fascination with young Ned and then turns on him, using the law to unfairly hunt Kelly’s family down. And the lean-faced, intense George Mackay now joins the likes of Mick Jagger and Heath Ledger, who also portrayed the legendary Irish bad-boy.
What’s fascinating about the film is the anarchic queer spirit and the bold stylistic choices director Kurzel infuses his movie with. It flies in the face of the hyper-macho posturing usually surging through a story such as this. As the movie careens more savagely out-of-control, this barbaric outlaw tale begins to feel like a western on ‘shrooms.
(This IFC film release opens Digitally and VOD today and is also exclusively playing at a Drive-In in L.A.)
